Dome Millenium

Inside the Dome
(Copyright Hugh Pearman/The Sunday Times. A fuller version of the article

published on December 26, 1999, as "At the circus of the century")
It's a big meringue, the Dome. A pleasurable enough confection, with

nothing much solid to it. After all, its architects constantly tell us that
it weighs less than the air inside it. Like a true circus, the Dome is less
about substance than about presentation, dressing up, magic, the suspension
of cynicism and disbelief. The people who like it most are aged between
eight and 14.
I know this because I met a lot of them scooting around the Dome on its big
preview day last week, wide-eyed with excitement. About 16,000 people were
in - half its capacity - and the bustle and noise they generated at last
brought the Dome to life. It works. It feels busy, purposeful, it has a
pulse. True, the contents of many of the Zones appear vacuous in the
extreme if you are a middle-class, reasonably intelligent, slightly
world-weary adult as most of we critics are. But we are not the target
market. One of the ironies of the Dome is that it was conceived - by
middle-class folk like us - not to be an elitist enclave.
Nobody used to worry about condescending to the masses. The Great

Exhibition of 1851, and the more parochial Festival of Britain in 1951,
were both put together by the Great and Good to show us and the world how
awesome Britain was, and how we'd better sit up straight and pay attention,
or we'd get a clip round the ear. This time round, it's all a lot more
reflective. The Dome is exhibition planning by focus group. Apparently we
have been asked what we think about the Millennium, what our hopes and
fears are, and these findings have - after years of grinding through
committees - resulted in the displays you see inside the Dome. They have
been rescued from terminal turgidity by Michael Grade, the man who insisted
on Fun when everyone else had forgotten it. We all owe Grade a great deal.
Hence the Robot Zoo and the Ant Colony in the Mind Zone. Hence the seaside
fun of "Living Island" which rather successfully disguises its eco-messages
about recycling and water pollution in a rip-roaring kiss-me-quick format.
Hence the "British Spaceways" dark ride of the Home Planet Zone, where you
sit in moving seats to experience blasts of hot air as you pass volcanoes,
and icy draughts as you visit the poles. Hence the fact that you clamber
around the internal organs of a giant representative human in the Body
Zone, or play a huge game of table football in the "Work and Learning" zone
(it's about teamwork, stupid).
The only part exempt from Grade's Fun dictum is the Faith Zone - the most
difficult of all, over which more hands have been wrung than any other.
Surprisingly, this turns out to be a success. Not so much for its espousal
of universal brotherhood, or its discussion of death, or its account of
2,000 years of Christianity. No: the success in "Faith" is the central
contemplative space by the American Quaker cowboy artist James Turrell -
one of his celebrated "sksyscapes", really a chill-out zone. This is
unmissable.
Even lost in contemplation there, however, you will be aware of the show
beginning in the central arena every couple of hours. Peter Gabriel's music
starts like an approaching squadron of Heinkel bombers and at times becomes
thunderous. The acoustic boom of the Dome means that - perhaps thankfully -
it is impossible to make out the lyrics. As for the action, devised by
rock-show architect Mark Fisher and choreographed by Micha Bergese, it's -
well, it's OK. I was disappointed, not least because I know how good Fisher
is when he stages extravaganzas for Pink Floyd, U2, the Rolling Stones and
so on. Also, Fisher had categorically assured me in 1998 that the show
would not be like a 1970s concept album. But this is precisely how it has
turned out.
It is a limp eco-tale of earth people and sky people, about

industrialisation and what have you, and about a star-crossed couple who
finally get it together in the air. The tiny figures soaring high over our
heads are strangely unimpressive - simply because they are too far away for
us to be able to make out their faces. The very height they work at - which
is unprecedented, and should totally wow us - counts against the effect.
There are some good coups de theatre here, but in daylight the show does
not hold the space, or the attention - though it looks better after dark.
More immediate fun is the specially-commissioned time-travelling Blackadder

film in the giant Skyscape cinema just outside the Dome - included in your
ticket price. This is a hoot, which is more than can be said of the
thankfully short Vic Reeves film that precedes it, "The Good Ship Citizen".
For once, Reeves' quicksilver, surreal wit comes over as leaden.
But none of the individual set pieces really matters all that much. The
overall experience is what counts in such places. Ask anyone who went to
the Festival of Britain in 1951 what exactly was inside the all-aluminium
Dome of Discovery on the South Bank, or the pavilions round it. Almost
nobody can remember. What they can remember, though, is the impression of
light and gaiety at a time of post-war austerity, of dancing in the rain to
Geraldo's swing orchestra, of the whole excitement of going there. Likewise
the Great Exhibition of 1851. Plenty of the displays from around the world
were pretty tawdry, according to contemporary accounts. The taste-makers of
the day hated them. But they were in the Crystal Palace, and that was
enough. The great glasshouse - Victorian high-tech at its best - captured
the public's imagination. It acted as a focus for the nation. So history
tells us that the only thing the Dome needs to be a success is to have
enough activities and events to achieve a critical mass. This, it manages
pretty well. Your day will be filled, I promise.
These days, of course, most of it is interactive. We do not just gawp at

exhibition displays, we engage with them. The Dome has taken this very
seriously, but unfortunately has placed far too much trust in computers.
You see people in the Dome wandering up to a screen, hitting a few keys or
punching a button or twiddling a trackball, getting bored as they wait for
five seconds, and then wandering off again before the screen has a chance
to do whatever it is meant to do. But when it comes to firing rubber balls
out of compressed-air cannons, or playing eco-pinball in Living Island, now
you're talking.
The Body Zone is bound to be the most popular when it opens, if only
because it's the most prominent, and first one you come to. But when I was
there, these were the top five attractions in the Dome -or at any rate the
ones with the longest queues. First, "Timekeepers of the Millennium" - the
place you fire those rubber balls. Second, "Living Island" with its
seaside-pier theme. Third, "Home Planet" - the only "dark ride" in the
place. Fourth, "Play", which has loads of giant interactive video games
which appear to work; equal fifth, "Journey", which covers transport, and
"Mind", where sculptor Ron Mueck's hyper-realistic "Giant Boy" was the most
photographed object in the place.
Least popular is the cardboard-tube spiral of "Shared Ground" which has no

real reason for existing other than a vague notion of community. The Faith
Zone does pretty well in comparison - about the same, in fact, as the "Self
Portrait" zone, which is all about the British character. As for "Work and
Learning" - well, go if you must - it does have that mega table football
set, and a symbolic enchanted forest - but if you miss it, you've not
missed much.
Did I mention queues? The Dome was meant to be designed in such a way that
queuing would be unnecessary. The big central show and the Blackadder film
outside are meant to relieve pressure on the Zones. Perhaps they do, but
even when only half-full, there was plenty of queuing in the Dome - not
least for the film, where actors are employed to entertain the punters as
they wait.
But this is what we British expect. Everyone must go to the Dome and form
queues, necessary or not. You will get very tired and irritable. Sometimes
it will be too hot, sometimes too cold. You won't see the point of some
bits, and there are bits you won't see at all. At intervals it will be too
noisy. But you can sit down easily enough, eat at prices pegged to the High
Street, and even enjoy the superb new underground line which takes you
straight there. You will find one or two things quite fun.
Me? I'm going again. With the family. We bought a real ticket with our own
money. And then, later in life, we'll be able to tell everyone how we went
to the Dome in 2000. They will ask us what was inside, exactly. We won't
really remember. But we'll never lose the sweet aftertaste of the meringue.

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Inside the Dome

(Copyright Hugh Pearman/The Sunday Times. A fuller version of the article

It's a big meringue, the Dome. A pleasurable enough confection, with

Nobody used to worry about condescending to the masses. The Great

It is a limp eco-tale of earth people and sky people, about

More immediate fun is the specially-commissioned time-travelling Blackadder

These days, of course, most of it is interactive. We do not just gawp at

Least popular is the cardboard-tube spiral of "Shared Ground" which has no

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